The Healing Process
by AmberStarry
Summary: You are your own worst enemy, Dean knows this well. His mind seems to be stuck on replay, reliving his worst moments. Cas wishes he could understand, but the human psyche has always eluded him, and sometimes he thinks it always will.


**The Healing Process**

It wouldn't be the first time, or even the second time that he had ended up in this place in the recesses of his mind, reliving the most terrible moments of his existence in a seemingly never-ending nightmare of uncertainty and pain. If there was any solace in the fact that he was in the business he knew the best, and was top of his game, it hardly scratched the surface of his misery. And that wasn't even the sad part; what really made him want to grind his knuckles against the bricks of the suburban building and grit his teeth in frustration was that no matter what he did he always ended up in the same situation, even if it was the last situation he wanted to be in.

Dean looked down at his hand. The skin of his fingers was torn and oozed little drops of blood after the pressure it had taken against the rough wall in front of him. Specks of dirt and brick were rubbed into the wound as well. It didn't hurt, not really. He had been through much worse pain before.

"What are you doing?"

The voice was monotone and the words sounded more like a statement than a question. Dean immediately knew who it was and didn't bother to turn around when he answered. "Wallowing in self-pity. What's it to you, assbutt?" He was so engrossed in his own anguish that he didn't even notice he had used one of Cas' own makeshift insults against him.

The angel shrugged his shoulders and looked off into the distance for no discernible reason to any person who might have been watching him. "I wanted to see if you were okay."

"Well I'm fine, so you can fly your feathery ass back up to heaven now," Dean bit back almost fiercely.

Cas turned back to Dean, or at least the back of Dean's head, and narrowed his eyes sceptically. "I don't believe you."

Castiel's rough baritone scraped Dean on a subconscious level that he could not ignore. The hunter sighed, frustrated, and looked up from his bleeding fist, turning around to face the goddamn heaven-sent pain in the ass he now had interrogating him. "Then don't believe me, I don't care, just get out of here." He was not going to explain the internal crisis he was having to some angel who didn't even know how to dress himself properly, he wasn't in the mood.

There was a silence as Cas stared at Dean quizzically, trying to decipher exactly what was going through the Winchester's head. He didn't quite understand the logistics behind the human psyche or free emotive thinking as a whole for that matter, but he did understand pain. He had had quite enough of his own pain, enough to know it when he saw it. He wanted to access Dean's thought processes to get a better grip of what was going on, why he and Sam had become so reckless and why Dean seemed so infinitely anguished. Cas knew there was more to this whole apocalyptic disaster than either Winchester was willing to let on; something on a level much deeper than the mere impending doom of the world could penetrate. Something close to home, no doubt, rooted in layers of incident and regret, bubbling away insidiously in the crevasses of their minds. Yet any emotional concave like the one Dean seemed to be going through eluded the angel. All angels ever did was oversee the world, they never had to experience internal conflict – well, not under normal circumstances – they were peaceful and serene in their minds. Maybe it was a good thing, but Cas decided it was more likely the result of being deprived of eventuality that angels almost didn't feel. After all, why would they need to hurt if nothing ever happened to them? Because nothing ever did.

"You confuse me," was the response Cas decided to settle on. It was true in so many ways, and it seemed like the only thing that Cas could express at this point.

Dean rubbed the balls of his wrists against his eyes. "I confuse me," he muttered in his typically cynical way.

"But you really do," Castiel insisted, stepping forward. "Humans are so complex, to get one's mind around the way one works is almost impossible. I wish I could understand your pain, Dean."

"You don't want to understand my pain Cas," Dean said frankly, "nobody would want to understand this pain. I don't want to understand this pain, it's not worth understanding, it's worth shoving into the deepest corner of my mind and trying to never remember it again. But I won't forget, because I never do. It's always there, and it always hurts. You don't want to understand that." The hunter shook his head, as if willing the painful thoughts to fly away with the motion. No such reprieve was given.

"I think," began Cas, "That nothing could ever be quite as bad as we think it is. It may seem that way, but there is always a silver lining. I am sure of it." He had begun to question the blind faith he had in beliefs like this, but he had not wavered completely yet and so he felt the point still stood.

Dean growled and grabbed the lapels of Castiel's trench coat, bringing their faces so close together that only a breath separated them. "Don't give me that Cas," he whispered threateningly, "Don't try and tell me something good will come out of this, or that there is something better planned for me. Because there sure as hell hasn't been anything good at all in the last thirty years of my life and I'll be damned again if everything gets magically fixed just because you said it will."

Cas fixed his gaze on Dean's eyes. He was filled with so much anger that Cas just couldn't understand. Dean was an anomaly – in the majority of circumstances he wore his heart on his sleeve, for the most part, yet time and time again he proved to be the hardest enigma to crack. How could somebody be so simple and so complicated all at once? He couldn't answer Dean, he didn't have any words. His thought process was, somewhat to his relief but mostly to his surprise, intterupted by Dean closing the small gap between their faces.

Dean wasn't sure what he was doing; all he knew was that he couldn't handle Cas' mystified cobalt eyes studying him any longer. He felt like an alien to the angel more often than he'd like to admit; but that couldn't be helped, they were different species. They would never really be able to connect properly anyway, or so he had believed in the beginning. Now Castiel's slow comprehension of the human nature was more endearing to him than irritating, but he still hated being studied. He wasn't a laboratory experiment and he didn't need to be picked apart by the prying eyes of a rogue angel. At the same time, he acknowledged that he needed a release. So he did the first thing that came to his mind, and pinned Castiel against the brick wall, thereby cutting off their staring contest and distracting himself at the same time, killing two birds with one stone. He noted that Castiel tasted like hamburger meat and stale blood, with an aftertaste of alcohol. The angel didn't eat (the exception being when he was under the influence of Famine) so it made sense he would taste like the only thing he had stuffed into his mouth after taking his vessel. It occurred to Dean that he himself must taste exactly the same, as his diet was almost identical. A primal urge to press himself harder against his partner surfaced, and he didn't see the point in fighting it. His grip tightened around the collar of Castiel's coat and he moved one hand up to slide into the angel's dirty mussed hair.

Meanwhile Cas tried to get a grip on the new sensations that were coursing through him. He had never committed an act like this in heaven; angels didn't get the urge to do so. Not that he objected to this, it was quite titillating and informative. He slid his hands down Dean's back to his waist and let them rest there. He felt Dean push more persistently against him and gave in obediently by giving the hunter access to his mouth; he didn't feel like he had any right to deny Dean whatever he was trying to get by doing this, after all he had no experience in these matters and who was he to question something he knew nothing about?

They stayed like this for a few more seconds before Dean pulled back and turned away, gasping for air all the while. He let go of Cas and wiped his mouth after he managed to catch his breath. "We never speak of this," he muttered, not daring to turn back around and meet Castiel's eye.

Cas simply stared at the back of Dean's head again, before deciding this was probably one of the times it was not worth thinking about the implications of what had just occurred. "Whatever you say, Dean."

That was it? Dean had to school the indignant rage that started to spring up in him. Did Cas even care about anything? Or was he really just using them for his own little mission. It really pissed off Dean that he couldn't blame Cas for his general insensitivity because the poor bastard didn't know any better, but it didn't change the fact that at times like these he wanted to punch Cas for it. He looked back down at the hand that had been bleeding previously and sighed. What else could he do? He took a deep breath and then mustered up the will to face Cas again, only to turn around and find Cas was no longer there.

And so he was alone again, and the wall looked more appealing than ever, but the Impala beckoned and Sam was waiting for him at the motel. So he walked away and didn't look back, knowing that what had happened would be forgotten in the recesses of his mind only because it was something he wanted to remember. For now he meditated on it because it made everything a little easier.

Then Dean realised something he had been to preoccupied to notice before and brought his hand back up to eye level, and saw that his wounds had disappeared.


End file.
